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There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

wired.com

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Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#71

Post by johannes1234321 »

flohofwoe wrote: post #35
hurrdurr2 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agreed. What drivel. I couldn't even finish reading the article. We have senators grilling tech CEOs that don't understand the difference between an iPhone and an Android device. This is unacceptable to say the least.

To play devil's advocate: What is the difference between an Android phone and an iPhone phone, and if there is, what does it matter to a customer? Both can make phone calls, both can display web pages, both can run apps. There's one fairly irrelevant difference because it's an historical accident so it will probably be eliminated soon: one platform owner already controls the platform completely, and the other not yet…

> What is the difference between an Android phone and an iPhone phone

What is the difference between a cheap Android and a premium Android device relative to difference between iPhone and premium Android?

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#72

Post by johannes1234321 »

aaron695 wrote: post #65
willis936 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken like someone who doesn’t interact with any scientists. I work at a university and have a friend group of chemists PhD students. Every single one of them fit your requirements for the romantic vision of a scientist, yet have far more accurate models at their disposal than previous generations of scientists. “You never see them.” because you choose not to look. You look at your algorithm driven feed and shape yo…

Of my science friends, a few in chemistry, with and without PHD's, no they don't do science. At best they fetishize science pop culture. They are very good at their specializations though. My tech friends do however do science, obviously a subset of my tech friends, for a lot it's also a means to an ends. Those tech friends mess with chemistry, mess with electric experiments, stay up and watch the Higgs Boson announc…

There isn't the "universal scientist" like a Leonardo da Vinci anymore as there are too much knowledge, but scientists who have broader impact do exist, while most science is in specialisation these days - we are so deep in many fields, that going deeper can't be done equally well in multiple fields.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#73

Post by knorker »

That's a really long article to say what we already know: That "expert" means to know in detail a narrow thing.

It hasn't been possible to be a true polymath in like 500 years. Surely this isn't news to the author?

There's no such thing as "an expert on everything"? Yeah, no shit. It's almost tautology, due to the limitations on human brains and the advancement of science since the renaissance.

Another way I think this article misses the point is that they're not dragging Sundar in front of congress because he knows everything about Google (he can't), nor for the congresspeople to learn it (they can't, even if Sundar knew, and could convey, and had infinite time).

They do not start from "let's understand everything first", because they can't. They are dragging them in to answer a question.

You don't need to know the lunch schedule of the San Bruno office, or how many registers the x86 processor has, to answer the question of how political ads should look in today's world (or whatever the question is).

So the article doubly misses the point.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#74

Post by sriku »

andersco wrote: post #9

This seems to imply that “tech expert” is someone all-knowing regarding tech. In my mind “tech expert” is about literacy. You may not know the specifics of all technologies but you have the mental toolkit for understanding them conceptually. But it is also about context. If you are the person who people ask for help with tech stuff, well, then you’re an expert, at least in their minds.

The writeup is not so much about the semantics of the words, but more about the fact that there are so many moving parts designed by diverse teams that no one individual (or even team) has a complete enough understanding of the whole that's sufficient to predict it's consequences on society in relation to its values.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#76

Post by willis936 »

aaron695 wrote: post #65
willis936 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken like someone who doesn’t interact with any scientists. I work at a university and have a friend group of chemists PhD students. Every single one of them fit your requirements for the romantic vision of a scientist, yet have far more accurate models at their disposal than previous generations of scientists. “You never see them.” because you choose not to look. You look at your algorithm driven feed and shape yo…

Of my science friends, a few in chemistry, with and without PHD's, no they don't do science. At best they fetishize science pop culture. They are very good at their specializations though. My tech friends do however do science, obviously a subset of my tech friends, for a lot it's also a means to an ends. Those tech friends mess with chemistry, mess with electric experiments, stay up and watch the Higgs Boson announc…

Ah. So when you say “do science” you mean “worldly and balanced”. Those people exist. Current culture no longer regiments it because it is less effective at making progress. If you’re wealthy, it’s a great way to keep yourself entertained. It’s akin to traveling. There is no doubt that it makes you interesting and valuable and expands your worldview, but it doesn’t actually do anything in terms of adding to the value of humanity.

Also, I strongly disagree that scientists are not “doing science”. They are: at an incredible pace on a tight budget. I consider myself more towards the wordly side and less on the specialized side, but I’m an engineer. I don’t need to dedicate my life to focusing in on a series of complicated fields because I don’t need to understand biological mechanisms. I can be one of the best people in my field and then spend my free time dabbling with other things. Saying that people who dedicate their life to actually pushing scientific progress forward are “not doing science” while the people who kick back and play with toys are is incorrect and disrespectful.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#78

Post by shekharshan »

I think the author meant to say even developers do not understand the decisions some of the ML algorithms make. Anyone who had to debug ML may partially agree with that.

But this doesn’t mean people don’t understand infrastructure. Fundamentally we are dealing with compute, storage and networking. We just combine them in different ways to come up with solutions optimized for different workloads.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#80

Post by starky »

The author seems way too focused on the exact meaning of "expert" without thinking about what they actually need from a subject matter expert for a specific hearing. Who you need for an ethics hearing will likely be different than who you need for a political hearing even though they are both "experts".

A subject matter expert before a political hearing needs to understand the societal and financial decisions of a class of technology and be able to explain it in a way that others can understand. Pretty much any tech leader should be able to do this. A major issue with this is that politics in the US (and plenty of other countries) are so driven by money that you end up with a bunch of politicians that are willfully ignorant of the sectors they are supposed to legislate for because they are paid to just do what the people with the money want you to do.

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